July 13, 2009

The Dwarven Gentlemen’s Club is now recruiting!

Since the weekend renders me even more pointless and frivolous than usual (when I’m not wrecking all my gear) and I have recently committed to overcoming my WoW prejudices, M’Pocket Tank and I rolled up a couple of dwarf hunters, on the assumption that the best way to explode prejudices is to embody them all.

Alliance. Shudder.

Dorf. Shudder.

Hunter. Shudder.

And, omg, it’s the most fun in the world.

Seriously.

I could throw my sissy robe aside right now and start a new blog called bignosebiggun.wordpress.com.

Well … okay … maybe not.

But it’s still that much fun.

Here is my mighty level 10 dorf:

My First Dorf!

Isn’t he just fabulous? I particularly like the belt with the heart on it, I think that’s a nice touch. I have to say, I’m getting a sexually ambivalent vibe from him. I think it’s the perfectly groomed beard and the waxed moustache. Also you can’t tell from this angle but he’s got a long, flowing ponytail that would shame a belf.

Also check out his potent pig! I can’t tell you how much I love my pig. It’s a war machine, that beast, I tell, you a war machine. She’s called Empress after the Empress of Blandings, another sterling hog.

Unfortunately, I’m slightly fearful that I’ve inadvertently mistreated her. When I first made sweet sweet love to her by, err, hitting her in the face with a concussive shot to slow her down and then crooning sonnets while she lumbered, dazed and confused, in my direction, she was naturally, well, a little bit unhappy afterwards. M’Pocket Tank suggested I feed her as a way of cheering her up.

Well, I just wasn’t prepared. I don’t go out into the wilderness with my pockets stuffed full of pigfood on the off chance some sweet little porcine is going to catch my eye. A brief investigation indicated that she would especially enjoy some meats so I rummaged through my amo and cracked boar tusk stuffed bags in search of something that would satisfy the new companion of my future life. I finally got my eye on some mouldering ribs I had stashed in there and duly handed them over.

Several ribs down, she had, in fact, cheered up immensely. In fact, she loved me. It was very gratifying.

It was then that I realised I’d been gleefully feeding her portion after portion of … beer-basted boar ribs.

Uh. Whoops?

I made a cannibal pig.

I feel quite bad about that.

Anyway, cruelty to animals aside (I’m a bit embarrassed that concussive shot forms such an important part of my seduction routine, it strikes me as being the equivalent of Rohypnol), being a dwarf hunter is such crazy crazy fun that M’Pocket Tank and I decided to embrace the Nesingwary lifestyle and do it properly.

The idea is to level doing only quests that dwarf hunters would appreciate and shooting vast quantities of random animals en route, which I’m embarrassed to note shows no sign of getting old. We were on our way to return some lost ammo to a bally silly chap, dontchaknow, and the pleasure of shooting things with guns swept over us with such intensity that we’d actually banged and tallyhoed our way across half the map (in the opposite direction from the amoless fellow) without even noticing.

In fact, we were so tickled by the idea of being proper Dwarven hunters that we made a guild for it: the Dwarven Gentlemen’s Club.

(Isn’t it ridiculous? I’m now the founding member of 2 entirely silly guilds, and I can’t find an actual guild to save my life).

So if any EU-based bloggers fancy doing something silly with me and M’Pocket Tank, roll yerself a dorf hunter (or another kind of hunter, I guess) on Emerald Dream and come join the, err, madness. I should probably also say that the Dwarven Gentlemen’s Club is not a sexist establishment: they welcome fillies, too, of course, if they’re the right sort of filly.

Hmmm… I suppose I’d better make my recruitment pitch. I haven’t quite had the courage to blast this out over General but, heh, give me time…

The Dwarven Gentlemen’s Club is now recruitin sound but not necessarily diminutive fellows, interested in huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’. We have a spiffin’ tabard and a jolly fine trophy cabinet, tally ho, what what!

And, look, here is a thoroughly splendid picture of the members of the Dwarven Gentlemen’s Club poised on the brink of adventure…

Oh I say, jolly fine view!

I think the plan is to get them to The Barrens to hunt kodos… and, some day, of course dinosaurs! The more fuck off enormous they are, the better!

I agree with Krizzlybear, I would check out your guild too if I have a EU account. I enjoyed the quests/lore with my Horde and Alliance toons. Ghostlands was one of my favorite areas for Horde and Duskwood was a favorite Alliance hangout. In fact, my level 22 Dwarf Protection Warrior will be heading to Duskwood soon.🙂

Hunters are so much fun. I have a few of them, My 77 Orc S Hunter happens to be my favorite. I also have a black boar, I named her Kali. However my constant companion is the white gorilla. They are one of my favorite animals in real life so it was natural for me to snag one in-game too.

Rosie isn’t my first alliance character really, but he’s the first I’ve stuck with beyond level 6. It’s a weird business creating a character – I have to have some level of imaginative engagement with them otherwise I just have no motivation to play. It’s nice to have new content to explore though, I know most of the Horde-side starting quests like the back of my hand. And, yes, Ghostlands is great. I like the Forsaken areas as well. Durotar and the Barrens, though, are a little tedious.

Holy crap, I have to stop reading your blog at work… the maniacal laughter is really starting to draw unwanted attention. (If you’ve ever heard a Draenai laugh, you know what I mean.)

First of all… Rosencrantz? How many people name their WoW avatars after Shakespearean characters? I laughed outloud when I saw the picture.

Next off… you’re worried that your dwarf is sexually ambiguous? Have you ever looked at Tam?? That dude gets upset if his robes clash with his slippers and talks with a very pronounced lisp (I imagine). I don’t think the 70’s porno ‘stache on your dwarf is cause for concern.

Actually, as I was relating to Beru in exhaustive detail below, the original Rosencratz was a nelf I hated and therefore deleted … although M’Pocket Tank has kept her nelfish Guildenstern. When we were standing together, a random player came up to us and said: “Aren’t you 2 supposed to be dead, lol” which pleases me to this day🙂 (I said the reports of our death had been greatly exaggerated).

You malign Tam most shamefully! *I* worry if his robe clashes with his slippers, he doesn’t care🙂 He’s a very severe and priestly sort. Definitely no lisp. He did have the closest thing to a friendship he’s capable of with a friend of mine’s hedonistic, tuxedo-sporting bank alt though so who knows😉

Hehe, you have no right to complain of people changing the looks of their blogs but I’m done for now, I think =P I think I like this.

Actually, M’Pocket Tank has a girl nelf called Guildenstern. The original Rosencrantz was a male nelf but I hated him and his green sideburns so much I couldn’t bring myself to play him. My dorf was originally going to be called Tarquin (in protest against the fact dwarves all have to be called things like Axebeard) but M’Pocket Tank was distressed at the uneven number of Rosencrantzs and Guildensterns in the WoW universe so I re-created Rosencrantz as a dorf. Sorry, that’s a long and complicated history you probably didn’t want🙂

I wanted the history! I, like Beruthiel, suffered a mild disappointment when I realized Rosencrantz was not wandering the wilds on a killing spree with Guildenstern (as Shakespeare surely would have wanted for them…) Maybe your next pet should be Guildenstern?😉

After they changed pet skills way back when to give boars that nifty charge, you’d be a silly person to NOT use one. They’re crazy good at getting initial aggro, close with the enemy really quick, have tons of health and armor, eat nearly everything (including fellow boars, but strangely not including eggs) and unlike bears, they are relatively small and don’t tend to stand on top of things you’re trying to loot.

That, and they’re beyond adorable.

Whenever my fiance makes a hunter alt, he invariably tames a boar and names it Bacon. These days, though, I’ve taken to taming beast families nobody else uses, like hyenas, crocolisks and sporebats.

I think if I can ever bring myself to part with Empress, which seems increasingly unlikely, I shall replace her with *an even bigger* pig, and call him Francis Bacon, thus hitting all the cheap jokes one after the other🙂

*twilight zone* I made a dwarf hunter in beta called Littlenose. I kind of gave up when I realised that it would cost me 1g to be able to wield a spear and I woulnd’t really be able to throw it at stuff …

Littlenose?! Had he been in some terrible childhood accident that had deprived him of his magnificient dwarven hooter?

Also who needs a *spear* then they can have a *gun*. My gun is currently rejoicing under the name of boomstick (yay) and comes equipped with a scope. I should probably stop boasting about it in public.

It must be something about Dwarves and sexual preferences. I made my first Dwarf toon who was also a Hunter. The screenshot that summed him up best was a shirtless leather pants wearing sociopath. How do you trust an axe wielding dwarf when you can see their nipples?

…and had the exact same reaction – WHEEEE! My female orc hunter similarly totes around a pig, Zugzug, who is wonderful and all things porcine. While I have fed him mysterious “Haunches of Meat”, I have yet to intentionally turn him into a cannibal.

I branched out into taming a rare, Horde-only spawned beast (Ey-chee-something-that-sounds-like-a-sneeze), but I didn’t find it remotely as satisfying as going into battle with a black pig that screams SQUEEE! every time he attacks.

Truth be told, I’ve been embarrassed to even eat Wild Hog Shank in front of Zugzug. Especially as I imagine orcs aren’t the daintiest of eaters – it would seem a bit menacing and inappropriate after all we’ve been through together for me to be tearing apart a leg of pig in front of him ravenously. His little pig brain would have to be thinking, “That could be me! Savage!”

/lament
I’m in the states or I’d certainly join you for a romp on the Nesingwary side of life. I just rolled a hunter myself recently and can’t get enough of playing her. She’s a Draenei, though. No doubt she’d not be safe in a guild of sexually ambivalent dorfs.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, that film/play actually made watching and studying Hamlet interesting to me again. A fantastic film. The scene where they play badminton with questions (go watch it, it’ll make more sense) is inspired.

Yes, as I was saying above, I’m a huge Tom Stoppard fan. The film is very good indeed- I particularly like totally emo-Hamlet.

I always managed to do avoid actually studying Hamlet which is why, I suspect, I still like it🙂 It’s one of those plays I’m always interested in seeing, simply because there’s so many variation the director and cast can make to the way you think about it.

me too! i finally “got” Shakespere because of their interpretation of Hamlet as a total whack-o, jumping on tables and cackling like a chicken. “What ARE you, my lord?” “I AM A FISHMONGER!!!” brilliant. then i finally figured out that all those high school teachers were leaving out all the weird and dirty bits, and the Bard became oh so much more interesting!

Oooh, when I get some time I’ll be sure to do this, it sounds like fun😀 now i have to think of a name… tell me, are the Shakespeare’s character names a theme of the guild? Because I was thinking Prospero has a certain ring to it.. even if i hate The Tempest. Eurgh.

The Shakespeare theme is entirely random although I have recently acquired a new pig, and he’s called Yorrick. (yes, we do stand over his body going “Alas poor Yorrick” when he dies). Prospero is a good name – although what is your aversion to The Tempest?

It’s probably just because i’ve studied the play, but I found the characters to be largely two dimensional (excluding caliban) and the ideas raised wern’t quite interesting enough to make up for it. Oh well, to each their own.

Studying something can often kill it stone dead. I think it’s a vastly uneven play but I’ve been fortunate to see a couple of really fantastic performances which is one of the few ways to be won back round to a text you find “meh.” Normally Propsero is played up as this extremely wise Patrick Stewart type with Much Gravitas but in my favourite performance they went for “nutty old tramp” basically, pyschotically controlling and a bit out of his tree, which worked *surprisingly* well and made a lot of sense of the text.

Tamarind is a holy priest (in World of Warcraft; in real life he is something different) which means - according to some of the folks he has PUGed with - he stands at the back in a sissy robe and does nothing.